The Apple Mac Pro Is Dead

Apple is discontinuing the Mac Pro and has no plans to offer future hardware in the Mac Pro line, the company told 9to5Mac today. The last Mac Pro was announced in 2023 and, even then, was a confusing product.

The Mac Pro has been removed from Apple’s website and any previous links that did lead to a buy page for the computer now redirects to a navigation page for all Apple’s Mac offerings — sans the Mac Pro, of course.

When Apple announced the new Mac Pro powered by Apple Silicon — specifically the M2 Ultra chip — the offering already didn’t make a lot of sense for pretty much everyone. Apple simultaneously announced the Mac Studio powered by the same chip, which is significantly smaller. The hulking, tower design of the Mac Pro — which Apple migrated back to after the disastrous cylindrical design of the 2013 Mac Pro that many dubbed the “trash can” — was mostly empty.

I was at Apple Park the day the Mac Pro was announced, and looking at all the space on the inside of the tower, I wasn’t really sure there was enough of a market for this thing to sustain the design.

“There will be a lot of people who won’t even pay close attention to the Mac Pro because they’ll think it’s way more computer than they’ll ever need, and they would be right — but probably not for the reasons they think. If you were to show them the Mac Studio with M2 Ultra, their reaction would probably not be as extreme simply because they have been conditioned to believe the Mac Pro sits high, high above all other Apple computers,” I wrote back then.

“Today, it just doesn’t.”

It turns out, that statement applied for the entire lifespan of the Apple Silicon Mac Pro.

The only thing the Mac Pro offered that the Mac Studio didn’t was expansion slots for PCIe and the ability to upgrade the SSD later. That’s it. For that, you got to pay a hefty $3,000 premium.

“I don’t know how much longer this computer will really need to exist,” I concluded. “The need for PCIe expansion is already shrinking and once that is no longer needed, the Mac Pro might finally be retired.”

That day wasn’t today, despite it being the day the Mac Pro was officially buried, but instead was one that passed long ago. It was an inevitable conclusion to the 20-year lifespan of the Mac Pro.

Image credits: Apple